Our Relationship with Sports

For all the sports widows who constantly have to battle for attention with the TV screen, radio or anything that streams your lover's favourite sports team or anything to do with the franchise or game, let me make it simple as to why your whining will never get you anywhere.

I fit nicely into the category of sports fanatic, as I thoroughly enjoy and anticipate the lengthy durations, successes and failures all of sport has to offer. I weep and I scream and I collect trinkets some would consider crap, but I find player cards, mini helmets and football erasers to have extreme value to my commemorative soul. The relationship I have with my favourite sports teams have the potential to outlast all other relationships I build over the course of my life. Seriously. Just like best friends, boyfriends and parents, my sports teams and favourite players also let me down from time to time and render me in tears and fits of rage the equivalent of a bad breakup. But in this relationship I always come running back. What's worse is I take the emotions of the our previous downfalls and lock them up in a basement on the underside of my brain. While some fans have it good with teams who have continued success (the Patriots, the Lakers, the Red Wings, the Yankees etc....) some don't have it as nice and end up stuck in mentally and psychologically abusive whirlwinds that last years and even decades (the Leafs, the Pirates, the Browns and the Bobcats).

Counselling doesn't help; only winning, good drafting and smart trades. Money management can go a long way too if handled correctly, but those seeking contract renewals and free agent signings always have something up their sleeves. When handled poorly can inflict the same amount of stress to a sports fan one would encounter in their own financial pitfalls at home. Sickening, right? But for many, cheering for a specific team is like a marriage - for better or for worse, in sickness and in health. Don't even get me started on player health and its effects on a loyal fan base. All you can really do is watch, and watch what you say.

Sometimes when a player leaves the beloved team, for specific reasons he becomes the enemy. He is a traitor, a coward and not nearly as athletically capable as we once thought he was. It's the equivalent of cheating with a sleazy hooker from the Jersey Shore, and then having their cheap perfume stay on their jerseys forever. There is often no recuperating a relationship like this, as the overall affection lies with the team, and often not the athlete.

If you're really looking for a time to strike and veer your lovers senses away from the everlasting season, pay close attention to the standings. They speak volumes and are easy to read.

Check their Last 10 Games, and if the statistic looks something like this: 3-6-1, it means they've been playing poorly and you may have a chance to distract them for one night. However when it looks like this: 8-1-1, it means they are on fire, and nobody wants to turn down a groover and shaker in uniform.

Also, consider their Home and Away stats. Find out where they are playing, the home team is usually on the bottom when it is set up like this:

Hurricanes

Leafs 8pm

If the Leafs have a poor home record, those odds don't jump dramatically over the course of one game. Just say, "honey, the Leafs have lost their last 5 games at home and they've been pretty streaky lately... I think we can let tonight slide." That to me, seems reasonable. A good argument, but it depends on where the team is in the season.

Consider their overall record, the approximate amount of games left in the season and where they stand in the rankings. Once the odds of a post-season are out the window, you have the ultimate upper hand and can use that as a sole reason to give up tonight's game, and almost every other game that's left in this failure of a season. If there is still a remote chance for a second season, your odds are dramatically reduced and may lead to your lover explaining in detail the importance of the game(s) at hand - an often uncomfortable situation for both sides.

In the end, your partner will hint at you or yell loudly and make it very obvious that sports is either number 1 number 2 or off of the charts of the priority list of life. I say take those hints, find out where they stand, and plan your attack based on the numbers, because numbers never lie.